Stairway To Heaven

Last week, I met Prabhu, a programme manager, for coffee. He is also a lecturer at NUS and was pursuing his PhD at the SeSaMe Lab more than ten years ago, around the time I was doing my Final Year Project (FYP) at the database lab. Although we were in different stages of our academic journeys, our paths crossed back then, and it was great to reconnect after all these years. I reached out to him because I had been feeling anxious about what to do next with my AI storytelling platform, Kakis.ai . Recently, it received some public attention through its collaboration with Alibaba Cloud and HeritageSG in an AI storytelling video challenge . While that was encouraging, it also made me confront some uncomfortable questions. AI is an incredibly competitive space. New models and products emerge almost daily, particularly from the U.S. and China, where many of the frontier AI models are developed. I found myself wondering: Should I continue investing my time and energy into this? Can I realisti...

Eight years ago, my then-girlfriend and I made our first World Cup bet. It was 2018, a teenager named Mbappé was tearing through his first World Cup, and we were still in our dating days — the kind of couple who turns everything into a small competition. We each picked a champion, shook hands, and a tradition was born. Four years later, in 2022, we did it again — this time with a one-year-old on our laps who contributed mostly by chewing on the remote. And now, in 2026, the game has grown into a full five-person family draft, with rules, priorities, and one very opinionated five-year-old. The rules Simple, but sacred: everyone picks before the tournament starts, picks are made in priority order, and — most importantly — you cannot pick a team someone else already took . First come, first served. The stakes: bragging rights, and a "potential award" that Grandma takes very, very seriously. Pick #1: The five-year-old oracle Our son got first priority — house rules favor the youn...

In the past month, I was involved in the renovation of our new home. Though it was not a big project, it did draw quite some attention from the family, as many small renovation decisions need to be discussed before consolidation. Indeed, I acted more like the project lead and coordinated between the contractors and the family members. Yesterday morning, my wife and I went there together to inspect the current status. She is quite satisfied with the result.  (Image of trees from a lounge room of my new apartment) Wifey loves to summarize and improve with feedback. As it's close to CNY,  she asks how my company is doing and what the plan is for next year. I shared besides the multimodal video AI agent, I am also working on two other AI initiatives.  One is related to prudent AI for more constrained industries such as manufacturing, finance, and healthcare. This initiative is primarily led by a Singaporean partner, who has deep business connections and foresees a potential f...

It comes pretty naturally for me to use AI agents for different tasks, and I'm a paying customer for some of them for the team, as well as for my own use. The reason our team continues to pay for these services is related to a brutal fact: it's too costly to hire skilled human beings to do the work. Take some of the tools, for example.  We used Lovable for prototyping and diagram creation. It helped our team communicate more easily with customers, especially SMEs and individual entrepreneurs seeking idea validation. SMEs/Individuals may not be able to commit to a full project due to limited budget and a lack of tech expertise. They expect a tech consultation that helps them visualise their ideas and map the workflow, and identify the gaps on why/which it may/may not be the right idea to proceed at the moment.        (Shao and my AI Agents created using ChatGPT) The traditional MVP/POC process will be more costly and time-consuming. With the right tools, like L...

I haven’t been writing blog posts for some time. Part of the reason is that I’ve been in firefighting mode—constantly dealing with urgent issues without the mental space to reflect deeply or think long-term. I also didn’t yet have the clarity or wisdom to prioritize effectively from the list of tasks and ideas in front of me. But with some recent strategic shifts, more than a month of deep thought and open conversations, the help of advancing AI tools, and exposure to quality content both online and offline, I’ve started to form a clearer picture of what’s happening now—and what steps I want to take next. 1. A Proactive Mindset Toward AI a. Empowered by AI Tools Recent AI advancements have made it significantly easier for me to execute a variety of tasks. Whether it's writing proposals, generating images, or even managing some accounting work, these tools have increased my efficiency by 50%–100%. More importantly, they give me the feeling of being backed by a diverse team—some...

I recently enjoyed a swift lunch with an old friend, who was once my roommate during our school years. We had an in-depth conversation about life and career. To my mind, his thought process is far more mature than mine, and his decisions seem more future-oriented. Although our conversation was private, I believe certain insights should be shared with a broader audience. 1. The Role of Luck in Life.  His life experiences have significantly highlighted the impact of luck. While I'm not ready to accept this fully, similar sentiments have been echoed by other successful and wise individuals I've interacted with. I also recently watched an informative video that lucidly explains the 80/20 rule and the principle of luck. The video demonstrates through "agent-based modelling" how the wealthiest person isn't necessarily the most talented but is usually someone of average talent who encounters multiple lucky events in life.  I agreed that luck indeed plays a vital role and...